Presenting the "other" side of academic physics, where people
backstab and give lousy talks. Where people are sometimes lazy
or incompetent, and the best don't get the credit or the job.
From the perspective of someone lucky enough to have landed a
tenure-track professorship.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Why?

Why do construction companies use a one dollar toilet flush handle made of plastic that will certainly break when another couple bucks gets you a metal one that will presumably last forever? I don't think the companies around here build enough so that the couple bucks per toilet saves them signficantly (especially in light of the frustration of its customers).

Why would visit statistics remain about the same when no posting has happened for weeks? That's surely not a good sign.

Why do these motifs come in cycles? A while back all the bloggers were talking about their travels, and now it's all about the great food they eat when interviewing.

Why do I keep accumulating more media to digest? I've got a stack of Scientific Americans, Physics Todays, and Seed magazines waiting to be read. I'm behind on lots of blog feeds. I'm so far behind on keeping up with the arXiv that I'm thinking I'll just ignore three months of papers and start fresh. I've got a paper to referee and another one just came back from the authors correcting things from the last round. Add to all this the fact that I've begun listening to various podcasts on my MP3 player at the gym.

Why is the NYT trying to make me feel bad for watching Lost tonight? I don't believe in the supernatural...it's just entertainment.

I suppose you're talking about the plastic component inside the tank which is attached to the handle. If so, mine is currently broken.

These things break at times when one really wants them to work, so rather than buy a new fitting, I hooked up a lever through an air hole in the back. It turns out that this solves the problem well enough that I haven't bothered buying a new plastic piece.

Back before they made these things of plastic, they used metal and they broke back then too. And they got real gross as they dissolved in water.

Questions, questions... Many of them can be answered by the simple law "intelligence is a rare thing, and still rarer is its uninterrupted use".

In particular: 1) saving one dollar and getting a bad reputation may seem intelligent to construction managers...2) checking obstinately day after day for a post is some serendipitous behavior which is to be expected by the average blogger.3) you are subject to the bias of seeing things over and over once you start noticing them4) you are getting lazy, it's not uncommon for the average mammal5) you should not read NYT, it does not prove your intelligence more than not seeing Lost :)